The making of a Sarvodaya Sannyasin

Hi friends,

As many of you know, cleaning the politics of India is the most important goal of my life (more important than even spiritual goal or any other personal goal). I believe that a clean politics will inspire cleanliness in all other spheres of our social life as well. There is a quote attributed to Alexander, “I will be more afraid of an army of lambs led by a lion than an army of lions led by a lamb.” Politicians are our most visible leaders. Any nation state needs a system of governance. Democracy allows the highest participation of the masses. The political class in democratic countries devise policies which influence and shape the future of educational, economic, social, political, cultural and technical spheres of the society. Without a doubt, to show apathy towards politics is utter moral depravity and the highest cowardice apart from sheer foolishness.

One of the biggest problems faced in democracies all over the world is the role of money power. Let me jot down my thoughts on this issue in this article.

In India, the ground report says that at least 5 crore rupees are spent on each MP seat by all main candidates; the amount is to the tune of at least 2 crore rupees for MLA seat and at least 20 lakh rupees for mukhiya/corporator elections. Let us do some calculation (I will neglect mukhiya/corporator elections because they are not party-based). In 5 years’ time-frame, 543 MPs are elected to Lok Sabha. So, for a mainstream national party, the cost of Lok Sabha election is 5 * 543 = 2,715 crores. Assuming that each MP constituency maps to 5 MLA constituencies on the average, the total money required by a national party for legislative assembly elections in all states of India will be: 2 * 543 * 5 = 5,430 crores. I discount this assertion made by many people that much of this money is used to buy votes. I think, when that is done then the cost of a MP election runs into tens of crores. The calculation I am making based on 5 crores for each MP election and 2 crores for each MLA election is based on the expenses in pamphlet distribution, organizing meetings and means of electronic communication and transportation for leaders and active cadres – and the expenses of 5 and 2 crores are reasonable estimates for even such legitimate expenses in MP/MLA elections.

If we do a sum total, we find that it becomes 2,715 + 5,430 = 8,145 crores every 5 years or around 1,600 crores every year. Assume that a national party has around 10 lakh active donors. It will require a donation of around (1,600 crores)/(10 lakhs) = (1,600 * 100 lakhs) / (10 lakhs) = 16,000 every year from each of these 10 lakh active donors. Theoretically, it is not possible to raise this much money from good cadre base. But, the practical reality is almost all Indians are quite stingy in donating to any cause, but not when it comes to family expenses (the cancer of “family comes first” mentality) – yeah, I know I am generalizing about the great Indians, but I will stick to this generalization based on my personal experiences with people of India. So, we can safely assume that raising even 10% of this amount from donations is a big task, not to think about raising 100% of it. In this scenario, the political process in our country gets widely exposed to the crooks and criminals who wield enormous clout in our democratic system through their money power. Most of our politicians are crooks and criminals. The intelligentsia is as always too busy in perpetuating “family comes first” legacy of our forefathers generation-after-generation to do any meaningful sacrifices for cleaning the rot of our political system. Assuming that the more things change, the more they remain the same, I believe we need technical solutions to this problem rather than assuming that we can change the mentality of people comprehensively by making them donate to political parties generously so that honest politics can happen in this country. In any case, it often happens that once technical solutions are implemented, the eventual effect changes the mentality of the people also. Let me give an example here so that things are clear. In USA also, lots of social tensions on the race issue were present in 19th century just like we had on the issue of religion. But, USA’s law-enforcement institutions (police, judiciary, defence forces) have been so strong that even the worst riots in USA on race-issue led to the death of just few hundreds. Whereas in India, even in the very presence of one of the greatest men to ever have walked on the Earth, Mahatma Gandhi, we lost lakhs of people in barbaric riots. The institutional work done by USA leaders saved the USA from murderous riots leading to loss of lives of people. Whereas the spiritual work done by our greatest leaders could not save us from barbaric killings of lakhs of people. This proves that on average minds, the technical power works more effectively than spiritual power (spiritual power seems to affect mostly highly evolved souls.) Even otherwise, it is good to employ as many tools as possible to solve complex challenges which are very hurting by nature. So, let us work out very optimized technical solutions first as ideas and then as actual reforms through enormous efforts in future.

My technical strategies to deal with the serious problem of crooks and criminals entering our political system due to the vulnerability exposed by expensive election process are as follows:

(1) Have elections of both Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies together. The advantages of this are many. It will ensure that the election-campaign for both can occur simultaneously. So, the expenses of 8,000 crores per year will get reduced by at least 30-40% due to this one step itself. It will help even regional parties because the problem of separate election campaign funds for separate elections of Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies is present for regional as well as national parties. But, regional parties may raise one issue here: if elections of both Lok Sabha and Legislative assemblies are together, won’t it compromise the effectiveness of regional issues in the election due to crystallization of national issues, which may adversely affect the multi-party democracy and federal aspects of our policy. The argument is seemingly well-taken. But, the way our political system works, if a regional issue is related to intra-state development (related to only developmental matters concerning a particular state), such a issue can be effectively raised along with national issues by the political class. The problem happens mostly when a regional issue is related to inter-state matters or over division of the state itself. Still it should be said that such complexities arise even if elections are separate. For example, in a particular national or state-level election, political, economic, defence and many other issues gets raised before the electorate in a very complex matter. Sometimes, a large segment of the electorate vote for a party due to broad agreement on the issues they consider important even if they may not agree entirely with the party positions on those issues or may even be in complete disagreement on less important issues. So, the inherently complex nature of modern social, political and economic activities make this argument of joint election of Lok Sabha harming the regional issues as redundant. Hence, joint election of Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies is the key strategy for reducing the election expenses in out country by at least 30-40% for all parties, national as well as regional.

(2) No-midterm election – the largest party will constitute the executive in case of no coalition having a majority. As a necessary part of “(1) Have elections of both Lok Sabha and Legislative assemblies together.” and also due to its inherent advantage in putting less burden of having strong financial muscle on political parties and leaders, it is very necessary that no mid-term election be allowed. If a coalition government loses the majority in Lok Sabha or state legislature due to withdrawal of support by some coalition partners, the government should be allowed a period of 2 weeks for finding support from other parties (of course, without any financial scandals). If it fails to garner the majority support, the largest party will be asked to constitute the government for the remaining period of 5 year term irrespective of whether it has the majority or not in the “Lok Sabha”/”legislative assembly”. Please mark the word “the remaining period” which means that no more destabilization due to political machinations or wrangling be allowed. So, in such a scenario, we will always have a political executive and no mid-term elections (and no financial pressure on political parties). The problem with the largest party forming the government without having majority is definitely there. Such problems arise in passing bills or budget. The situation will become similar to presidential systems like in USA where many times the executive is republican (or democrat) whereas the Congress or Senate is dominated by democrats (or republicans) – so, lots of political give-and-take happens. This is quite acceptable and surely much better than the present system of money-power based corrupt politics run by crooks and criminals in this country. The government needs the budget to get passed at all costs before April 1, the beginning of the financial year, even though other types of bills may be allowed to linger for a while in the legislature and go through normal process of political give-and-take. So, the solution is to disallow the legislature to fail the government budget as a whole, but allow them to pass amendments to individual items of the budget with a simple majority. This will ensure that a minority government run by the largest party can still pass the budget before April 1, with the legislature still being able to influence the budget as per the will of the majority. So, with these strategies put into place, this strategy is fully workable.

(3) Campaign contribution matching by the Election Commission. The Election Commission should be allocated a separate public finance fund by the Government. Individuals should be allowed to donate directly to the Election Commission for this fund as well as through income tax forms (like it is done in USA). The Election Commission can then distribute the entire funds collected over 5-year period among various parties using certain reasonable formula. Some components of that formula can be: matching x percentage (make x 50 or 100 or so, but keep it same for all parties in order to be fair to smaller parties) of the individual donation to the party upto some ceiling limit (say Rs. 10,000). So, if I donate Rs. 1000 to a particular party, the Election Commission will match my contribution by another Rs. 1000 (assume 100% matching) and donate that amount to the party. If I donate Rs. 20,000 to a particular party, the Election Commission will match first 10,000 by Rs. 10,000 (due to the ceiling limit). Please neglect exact numbers as they are only for the sake of illustration to understand the basic idea. Of course, there is already a limit on the maximum contribution that an individual or corporate can make to a particular party – and that limit is definitely good so that a particular individual or corporate should not be able to use the financial muscle to subvert or dominate our political system.

(4) Equal and subsidised allocation of government means of communication and transportation for election-campaign work. Election campaign is obviously about communicating about the vision and track-record of the party and the candidate to the electorate. This requires use of telephone, mobile, print material, electronic media (Radio/Television). Government should subsidize the usage of all the communication resources to the parties on the basis of equality. For example, Doordarshan is national channel owned by government agency. Suppose the rate of an advertisement on Doordarshan is Rs. 10,000 per min. So, the government should give a subsidy of 80% so that a politial party desiring to use Doordarshan will need to pay Rs. 2,000 per min rate. This subsidised allocation is crucial so that political parties or candidates do not end up misusing government resources (which is often the case when resources are allocated free of cost). Also, the allocation should be equal for all parties/candidates. So, if both a national party and a regional party want to pay for 10 hrs of advertising time and that is the maximum advertising time that Doordarshan can allocate for election advertising, both should get 5 hrs each rather than using complex formulas of which party has how many seats and so on so forth. The reason is the party with more financial muscle has already so many means to employ; it is the party with less financial muscle which needs fair amount of government support for their election work. This strategy of “equal and subsidised allocation” applies to transportation means like government bus, air-flights and train travels as well. This will ensure a good level-playing field to new or smaller parties.

(5) A strong and independent anti-corruption agency to dent the role of money power in politics. Having a strong and independent anti-corruption agency will definitely dent the role of money power in politics because if it becomes difficult to make money or unscrupulously affect the decision-making process after winning elections, crooks and criminals will have no incentive to employ their financial muscle to enter politics. Anna Hazare’s movement for such an agency under Jan Lokpal bill deserves all the support that people of India can give. I have already wrote in good details in this article: Once upon a time, in a nation corruption was at its zenith and then ….

(6) The election method should be changed to include some innovations to deter the crooks and criminals from entering politics. There are suggestions like moving to proportional system where a party gets seats in Lok Sabha and legislative assembly based on its vote share (e.g. 30% of overall vote share means 30% seats allocated to the party) – you can read about proportional system here. I do not find it better as it makes the system party-based rather than leader-based and historically it is proven that it is easier to pin down accountability on individuals rather than on (amorphous) institutions at a microscopic level (at macroscopic level, we have to hold both individuals and institutions accountable). The voters of an MP or MLA constituency can hold their individual MLA/MP accountable for what he/she does or does not for them. So, the current system of voting for candidates directly is fine (this is technically known as plurality/majority system as contrasted with proportionate system). There are other suggestions like moving to “Instant run-off voting system” (also known as preferential voting). It is differently better than the present system (called “first-past-the-past” meaning the first person crossing the post wins the race.) of electing the person who gets the highest vote. The reasons are many: we have a graded level of choices in every aspect of life. How can it be then different when it comes to electing our MP/MLA? We surely want a candidate A to win, but if he/she cannot win, we would like the candidate B to win and so on, so forth. Also, this becomes a very effective method because strategies (1) and (2) have already ensured that no mid-term elections will happen. So, people will definitely look out for the most competent candidate as long as his/her party’s policies are in tune with voters’ beliefs and values. So, we should surely move to “Instant run-off voting system“. This will give more chance for honest people to win elections because even if due to casteist, religious or other narrow considerations, a voter marks a crook or criminal as his/her first preference, there is a high probability that his other preferences will be more based on competence (because the voter has already satisfied his/her narrowness partially by giving number one preference to a crook). I do not think that we really need to do anything beyond moving to “Instant run-off voting system” as far as the question of election method is concerned.

(7) Convicted crooks and criminals should be debarred for whole life from election process. Crooks and criminals have a free run in our country due to dysfunctions of our legislative, executive and judicial systems. But, we should at least bar convicted crooks and criminals for whole life from election process, be it a matter of voting or standing for elections. We should allow convicted crooks and criminals voting rights (but not the right of standing for elections) after the completion of the sentence only in the condition of their not being an elected representative in the past at any level of our political system. But, after conviction in a court, an MP/MLA or a mukhiya/corporator will lose even voting rights for whole life along with the right to stand again for elections for his/her breach of public trust is much more sinister than a non-elected crook/criminal. This will deter crooks and criminals a little bit more because they will get the social and moral stigma of losing even voting rights for having stabbed their nation.

These are the strategies that I could come up based on lots of reading of past 15-16 years plus some intuitive ideas that occurred to me this morning. I am eager for your comments/feedback and sharing any strategies that you have in mind for removing the rot of crooks and criminals entering our political system due to its financial vulnerability of our election process. Please comment in comments section below.

Thanks,
Gopal